Stowed away unobtrusively aboard the Discovery shuttle last week were
six stainless-steel chemical reactors, each about the size of a
football. In them, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing was conducting an
experiment that was not as spectacular as the main mission of
retrieving crippled satellites, but potentially no less important. The
company was studying how organic crystals grow in orbit. By combining
chemicals in containers in the weightlessness of space, 3M's scientists
were hoping to make crystals purer than any on earth.